Men are pervs, women are gold diggers

Miratech and its international partners have conducted the first international eye tracking study to measure how men and women look at the photo of a sexy young woman.
Conclusion: the men look at the woman’s chest and the women look at her ring.

Miratech led a study involving men and women in equal proportions, for a total of 210 participants from 7 countries:

Some of these partners are members of the International Usability Testing Partnership – IUTP – a network dedicated to user testing and consumer research. The IUTP is supported by Tobii, the world’s leading developer of eye tracking equipment.

The testing was conducted individually. Each participant was simply asked to look at the photo of a young woman for 20 seconds, with no specific instructions.

While they looked at the photo, their eye movements were measured using eye tracking technology.

Miratech then compiled and analyzed the results. The detailed results are available in a white paper:Men_are_pervs.pdf (PDF 5.9 Mb)

Original photo

Differences between men and women

In all countries there are some behavioral differences between the men and the women.

1 – The men spend 37% more time looking at the chest than the women do.

Men are all the same

2 – The women spend 27% more time looking at the ring than the men do.

3 – The women look at the top part of the face to identify the young woman, whereas the men look at the lips.

Similar behaviors between countries and genders

Certain behaviors are identical, regardless of the country or gender:

1 – The face is the area most looked at

2 – The time spent looking at the pelvis, right hand and hair is identical for both the men and the women

For all countries and genders combined, the face is the most looked at

Differences between countries

There are major behavioral differences between the countries.

1 - Out of the groups of women, it is the French women who look at the chest the most! They look at the chest for 2.7 times longer than the English women, who come last in that particular ranking.

International ranking of the time the women spend looking at the chest

2 - The French and Danish men spend the most time looking at the chest – almost twice as long as the other countries!

International ranking of the time the men spend looking at the chest

3 – The English women are the most materialistic: they spend 149% more time looking at the ring than the English men do, and 2.2 times longer than the French women.

International ranking of the time the women spend looking at the ring

4 - France is the country with the least difference between the men and the women. The men and women from France are those who spend the most time looking at the chest. The French men only spend 9% more time looking at the chest than the French women do.

The benefits of eye tracking

Once they had looked at the picture, we asked the participants to fill out a questionnaire to tell us what they had seen.

When answering the questionnaire, it was the men who most mentioned the eyes and the ring, and yet it was the women who had looked at these the most.

This is a good illustration of the difference between what is self-reported (questionnaire) and what is measured (eye tracking). With eye tracking, it is possible to measure behaviors that are impossible to reveal using conventional research methods.

Conclusion

Miratech and its international partners conducted the first international eye tracking study to measure how men and women look at the photo of a provocative-looking young woman.